Perpetual Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visualization of our Ocean Currents

Hats off to the Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, which produced this three minute animation called Perpetual Ocean. The visualization shows ocean currents as they swirled around between June 2005 and December 2007, and it was all produced with a computational model called ECCO2. ECCO2 attempts to model the circulation and climate of the ocean, helping scientists to understand how the ocean will contribute to future climate change. It’s some heady science that also yields some visually impressive animations. Perpetual Ocean (which was submitted to the SIGGRAPH 2011 Computer Animation Festival) can be viewed in a variety of formats from this page. More excellent clips can be found in our collection of Great Science Videos. via Kottke

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Comments (2)
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  • fefi says:

    beautiful animation!

    but where is Europe?

    Also, i live in the Canaries, where we enjoy a fabulous weather and incredibly rich flora and fauna thanks to the Gulf Stream.

    I was eager to see it coming all the way from Mexico, BUT half-way the animation heads South in the contours of Africa leaving us -and this impressive Stream- behind :(

  • Jonae says:

    what visual and energetic splendor so readily displayed by the waters, our life,the blood of the planets body.

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